According to the House rules, once every five years, the procedure and house
affairs committee is required to "undertake a comprehensive review .. of the
provisions and operations of the code," and report back to the House on its
conclusions, as well as any recommendations for changes to the rules.

The committee acknowledged its statutory reporting duties last June, when it
asked the House for an open-ended extension to the original deadline, claiming
that further deliberations were necessary in order to give the code "the
consideration it requires."

Since then, the review has come up for discussion on just two occasions,
according to committee records.

The last time was in October 2012, when the committee agreed to set aside $1,675 for further study of the issue.

From that point onward, it appears to have disappeared entirely, at least as
an active item of committee business.

So, what has changed since then?

Well, as far as the status of the review, nothing at all -- as far as I can
tell, there has been no progress at all towards that promised report since last
fall.

Outside the confines of the committee room, however, parliamentary
ethics have been in the political spotlight since a seemingly endless series of
Senate expense-related scandals began to surface.

As a result, MPs from all parties spent much of the spring session tripping
over themselves and each other to proclaim their respective and collective
commitment to full parliamentary accountability, while simultaneously reassuring
the public that the Commons is all but immune to such institutional ethical
lapses, as its occupants are elected, not appointed -- all the while allowing
the ethics commissioner's modest suggestions on possible improvements to their own
conflict of interest rules to languish at the bottom of the committee to-do
list.

Among her proposals: dropping the threshold for disclosure of gifts from $500
to $30, empowering the commissioner impose fines of up to $500 on non-compliant
MPs, and, perhaps most controversially, barring MPs from commenting publicly on
complaints until her office has received the request and notified the target,
and giving her more leeway to explain why she may choose not to pursue a
particular matter.

If adopted, those last two recommendations could drastically cut down on the
use of the code -- or, more precisely, the exploitation of the complaint system
-- to score partisan points by removing the element of surprise, and giving
Dawson the freedom to chastise members who lodge frivolous complaints.

The commissioner wasn't the only witness to appear during the brief period of
time in which the committee was actively engaged in studying the code: Behind
closed doors, they heard from Conservative MPs Leon Benoit, Larry Miller and Brent Rathgeber
-- who has, of course, since left that caucus -- as well as Commons Clerk Audrey
O'Brien and Deputy Law Clerk Richard Denis.

Until the committee reports back to the House, however, any recommendations
or observations they may have put forward are protected by the veil of in
camera secrecy, which means we'll just have to wait -- like the ethics
commissioner, "with interest" -- to see which, if any, proposed changes to the
code make the cut.

On the plus side, the committee charged with conducting a parallel-ish review
of the (legally enforceable, non-voluntary) Conflict of Interest Act
that governs ministers, parliamentary secretaries, political staff and senior
civil servants had just finished putting the finishing touches on a draft
report when the House rose for the summer holidays, which can be easily be
resurrected in its original form when the committee gets back to work next
month.

All of which leads one to the tentative conclusion that, while MPs can be trusted to exercise due diligence in examining the ethical guidelines they set for others, when it comes to governing themselves accordingly, a little outside oversight may be needed to ensure they get the job done.

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About the Author

Kady O'Malley has been covering the Hill for more than a decade (yes, really) for a variety of publications. An Ottawa girl (not quite born, but raised), she has a passion for politics that borders on the unhealthy, and has liveblogged her way through hundreds of committee meetings, press conferences, judicial inquiries, budget launches, cabinet shuffles, and even the odd constitutional crisis. Oh, and yes, her Boston Terrier really is named "BlackBerry."
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